Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Muhammad Ali's childhood home.

The actual parkland parklet is an extension of the alley. And I wasn't going to leave the alley like that. So after I cleaned the parklet, I cleaned the alley. It was a bit of a process. I became frustrated after I cleaned it and people came back to dump. And I posted framed artwork on the trees back there. Artwork that the kids did in the neighborhood and I laminated. Now I'm going to find a better way to put it on the trees. I'm going to start wrapping them with a bow and started planning events. Our first event was a neighborhood barbecue, and it had to be 50 or 60 people there.

This is where we had our barbecue, and I remember Miss Tammy Hawkins walking from that way on in.

She was so impressed. She said, you said this alley was clean, but until I saw it with my own eyes, this is crazy. It's a new sense of space, dignity. I have one neighbor who was upset that we're just now meeting him. The neighbors want this. I have a lot of support, especially from Beargrass Thunder. They've been extremely giving, extremely helpful. They help with the barbecue. It keeps me driven. I've already adopted two other alleys. There's one down the street from here, and the other one is Isaac Alley that I'm working on. And that is an extreme challenge. I consider myself a cleaner and a leader. The neighbors, they really want this, and they support this. And they are waiting for the next event, which is next Saturday. I need volunteers. The neighbors, they know they're going to come. They can't wait for it, but I need as much help as I can get.

It's very rewarding. SOS is a medical surplus recovery organization.

Every day is recycling day here. That's one of the main things we do. We keep things out of landfills.

We collect medical surplus from hospitals across six states in the whole country, supplies or equipment, and we donate to places that need those supplies and equipment.

I just go through each piece individually and put them in the boxes where they belong. Saline goes in the back with liquids. I was a practicing internist for 30 years. Every day I come in here, I find something I've never seen before, even after 16 years.

After all, the egg got cut. We are busier than ever, local and international.

They keep moving the merchandise. So I walk back and forth a lot, get a lot of steps in.

We can't stop. Very interesting place to work.

Gotten a bunch of people to volunteer here, medical people that I know. They usually like it.

Without volunteers, we could not do what we do here because most of the work on supplies and equipment, it's all done by volunteers. We have regulars that come, and then we also have groups. More now because we're so busy, we're shipping so much, we need more volunteers to help store our supplies and just help us reach our goal, our mission, to help people wherever it's needed.

It's really a plus for the community.

A quick tip for you. On the line is in in pickleball. If your ball lands on the sideline, baseline, center line, or even the kitchen line, even just by a hair, a little dimple, or an edge, it's still good. Keep playing, no problem. There's just one exception. If your serve touches this kitchen line, that's a short serve or a fault. Other than that, that's it. Play, have fun, and most of all, enjoy the game.

If you walk into a restaurant and you see an A, A's represent a passing grade under our placarding system of a score between 100 and 85 with no priority violations. Priority violations are

good afternoon my name is anthony piagentini and i am do we have anybody else online from council yet no uh and i'll be facilitating the budget uh hearing today by the request of the chair and vice chair of the committee hopefully they'll be joining us here in a few minutes um we're going to call this meeting to order it's uh june the 6th it's It's June the 4th, it's 4.51 p.m., and this is the budget hearing related to Metro, I'm gonna say Metro IT, but that's not right, Metro Technology Services. Welcome, let me read my little script real quick. Welcome to, this is the last day of department budget hearings. So let me just say thank you on behalf of the chair and vice chair of the committee. I know they usually thank everybody. I wanna thank our budget team here at Metro, Christina, Beth, thank you so much for all of your work. I wanna thank OMB. I wanna thank all of the council members, both in the budget team, as well as others that have come to these hearings. And of course the public, a lot of work goes into this. The hearings have gone very, very smoothly, and I really appreciate, I know we all appreciate all the work that goes into this, so thank you again to everybody. Appreciate all your work. I'm joined, the other committee members, that are here right now in chambers we have councilman joseph councilman parker we have councilman herndead online we have vice chair winkler and i believe in a moment we'll be joined by councilman chapel so i'll go ahead and announce her so when she comes in we'll add her to the record uh we have only one hearing today technology service will clerk please read the required notice for virtual meetings

This meeting has been held. We turn to KRA 61.826 and Council Rule 5A, Rating 4.

Thank you. As a reminder, departments will not make opening comments. We'll begin immediately with Councilmember questions. Councilmembers, you are allowed to ask three questions at a time. After that, you'll need to get back in the queue. We are officially joined by Councilwoman Chappell. Good to see you again, Councilwoman. Also, we will call on first-time questions from council members before I call on those who have already asked questions. I want to remind you before we start discussing Metro Technology Services proposed, or we're discussing their proposed $34.7 million operating budget and $11.6 million capital budget. We want to welcome the executive director. Chris, how do you say your last name? Sight. Okay. We want to welcome executive director Chris Sight. Thank you. Metro Technology Services budget includes several capital projects. I want to start with a few quick things. We'll start with project 58, ADA compliance analysis and remediation. The fiscal year 26 budget appropriated $445,400 to this project. We're seeing another $400,000 so we can bring Metro's digital systems in compliance with the American with Disabilities Act. What does this project include? Did we already accomplish plus what we're looking to accomplish in this next round for the project? And then when is the deadline to be in compliance and will additional funds be needed in future years?

Certainly, Chris Sight, Chief Information Officer for Louisville Metro, and thank you for having us here today. As far as the ADA project goes, our first year we spent a significant amount of time assessing all of our digital footprint and identifying both apps and websites that Metro government owns and manages that were out of compliance. After that, we brought on additional contracted resources to begin the remediation work, and that can be anything from making the color patterns of the websites slightly different so that they're easier to read. It can include remediating PDF documents. That's a significant portion of the work that we have out there. If you think about all of the documents, including the budget document that's being discussed by this committee, We have to make sure that that's machine readable for our residents and to comply with the new standards that were set by the Department of Justice in 2024. They originally set the deadline for that as April of 2026, so we were rapidly trying to hurry to finish that. The week before that deadline hit, the U.S. Department of Justice extended the deadline by one year, so we have until April now of 2027 to complete the work. to get into compliance. The other thing that we did is we put some safeguards in place on the website to try to prevent additional non-compliant materials from being loaded to the website in the future. Our website approach today is a very decentralized model where the agencies have content authors within the departments that load information. So we don't have a centralized content team that curates all of that data. for all of the metro agencies. So by putting those tools into place, we're able to keep the website from falling back out of compliance after we've put all the necessary fixes into place.

And so that almost, I mean, April 27, that's basically short of a couple months this fiscal year. So it sounds like by then we'll be done. I just want to make sure I'm getting clear. And then we do not see future budget allocations to this, that this will get us up to spec. Is that correct?

Of course, considering that we don't run into challenges with departments loading information out there, we are getting some pushback from departments about content that they upload that is difficult for them to convert into a compliance status. So we do have some unknowns still kind of hanging out there.

All right, and then one other question that I'm gonna ask, your contractual services category in the budget, so generally it's broken down by expenditures by category, your personnel services, contractual services, supplies, equipment, and then restricted or other projects, project expenses. If I go back over the past two years, so in the 25 budget, your actuals were a little over $15 million. This year, the proposal is $20.5 million. That is almost a 31% increase, a $5 million increase on what was originally a $15 million budget. Can you talk about what is driving that? That's a pretty significant increase over a two-year period of time. What's driving that?

Sure. So $2 million of that is the AI budget, or about $1.8 million of that is the AI budget that council approved last year for added licensing and other services that we're currently building out. We are seeing increases in a lot of our contractuals with technology companies that sell to us. So we are seeing some increases in our SaaS subscriptions and other agreements in that space. So that's the bulk of what we're seeing there. We have brought on some additional contract staff. Obviously the ADA work that I just mentioned was brought on with contracted staff so that we don't have to keep them on long term after the project's concluded. They're doing that remediation work on all the PDFs and other pieces of that and then they'll be let loose at the end of that engagement.

Last thing, and then I've got council members jumping into the queue here. Others, feel free to jump into the queue. When you mention AI, we've made an investment in AI. I don't want to alarm anybody and make an absurd claim like, hey, how many positions can we cut, right? But obviously with artificial intelligence, I've seen it in my own day job, you become more efficient at what you're doing, and then maybe we can slow down hiring or reallocate positions to other value-added activity. We are a personnel-heavy budget, right? do you see or is there a way to quantify how some of the investments we're making in using artificial intelligence in certain areas of the city can help slow down the future impact of personnel cost increases?

Certainly, I think where you would see the main gains from this investment now would be in our ability to offer better services that are available over a much longer period of time. And I'll use our 311 as an example, right? So they're open Monday through Friday, they have hours during most of the normal business day. We're testing right now agentic AI solutions that will allow us to let 311 be open via phone call 24 by seven. so that you can call and report a complaint. It'll put it into Acela for us automatically. And we don't have to add any additional staff in order to get that gain. So those are the types of approaches that we're looking at to grow our capacity as a city government without necessarily having to add headcount in order to achieve that. So that's our approach today for that. And that's one example of several that we have in flight.

I like it. I like it. Great idea. Thank you very much. Councilwoman Parker.

Thank you, I've got a couple of questions about cyber security and security services. So noting the positives of AI that you just laid out, I had a question, should we surmise that one million is needed for this coming fiscal year and all future years as a bare minimum? to spend on cyber security? And on the flip side of AI, is that enough to protect us against AI breaches in hacking, et cetera?

That's an excellent question. I think what we're seeing in the landscape right now, the company Anthropic with their Claude platform just about a month ago released what they called Mythos. It is a product that was able to very quickly identify vulnerabilities in software at a scale that a human could never do. It was also able to exploit those vulnerabilities. And so we do think that the threats are going to emerge and we're going to need AI tools Within our cyber security team in order to be able to defend against those attacks. So it is I'd say a bare minimum of an investment that we'll need in the security area I don't know that we have the manpower to keep up with The threats that are going to come at us once those tools are out in the environment.

Okay, so what so did I hear you correctly? You're going to have to invest in AI cyberware to protect against AI.

Correct. And I don't know that there's any way for us to avoid that.

Okay. And then security services. Why is security services decreased from 1.4 million down to 102,000, and that's on page 186 of the detail book.

Of course, so a good chunk of that is because we, for the last several years, have had a contract staff cybersecurity team that covers our weekends and after hours that we have sit in our facility. Working with OMB this year, we're converting those staff over to full-time, and that will actually yield some savings that we're turning back in as a part of our reduction that we had planned for the department for this year. So we're retaining all of the same headcount, same personnel, or transferring in just as full-time employees instead of through a contractor that was marking up their salaries, in some cases up to 40 or 50%.

Okay, and I guess that switchover is connotated in the personnel staff budget.

I believe so, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Vice Chair Winkler.

Thank you. Chris, my question is sort of tangential to what Councilman Piacentini asked about AI and maybe as much as anything this is directed at staff in terms of language that I'd like us to ask in the budget or ask for in the budget. You know, I would like to see, I mean, we, you know, last year's budget, we put in the money to hire a chief AI officer. One of the questions that we've asked of departments is, you know, sort of who is responsible within departments of identifying ways that we can implement AI to drive productivity and basically increase the capacity of departments. You know, Chris, do you think it's realistic that if we ask, if we put language in the budget that basically said, you know, by December or by next June, that we'd like to see some sort of action plan, maybe two or three or five projects that have a specific return tied to these AI investments. Do you think that's something that your department could meet and provide? And can you give some guidance on what is a feasible ask in that regard?

That's a great question, and I certainly think that by this time next year, we could give you some very concrete plans for that. We have several pilot projects that have been underway now since we brought our chief A officer on board. We're seeing some good success in that space. And back to what I mentioned with Councilman Piagentini earlier, we're seeing it to be able to build more capacity in the departments that are drowning in work. So 311 on some days they're seeing 45, 60 minute hold times, right? And so residents are hanging up and then they're calling their elected council members to try to get relief from that. We hear that, we see that. That's what we're kind of focusing our work on. If that's what you're asking for in terms of like, can we measure that? Absolutely. I didn't bring it with me today. I do have it actually on my tablet here, but there's an actual dashboard of the AI platform that we're testing to show how many thousands of calls it has already handled for Metro 311. So yes, I mean, in terms of delivering something like that to you, I think we absolutely can do that and we're taking an approach with these investments of being able to show where that investment is gonna pay off. We've only targeted four or five projects initially. One, because we've got a fairly small team and we have to work with departments to try to figure out these problems, but two, just we wanted to go in and be successful with it and measure it and invest in those things that were showing real value. Two of the pilots are showing, I think, incredible prospects of being able to provide that relief valve to the departments that just can't keep up with what they're trying to manage today with the personnel that they have.

Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I think, you know, when you sort of look at, you know, AI implementations at companies, a lot of it is, you know, initially, like, let's roll that copilot, sort of see how people use it. And that's certainly one way of seeing individual employees get greater productivity. But then I think having... you know, after you get sort of that initial learning, having some detailed projects that have some specific outcomes to it sort of helps generate that ROI on the investment. And so, you know, and I think the 311 example is a great one, right? This is a way, you know, that we can dramatically reduce hold times, you know, I mean, I don't think it's unrealistic to see a future where for most 311 calls, particularly, you know, if you're calling in a pothole or, you know, some sort of a routine transaction that you might only interact with a virtual agent, you know, and maybe just the higher value, more complex tasks are routed to a person to interact with. And so I think, you know, identifying that whether it's in that area, whether it's an open records request, you know, when LMPD was here, we talked about the amount of administrative work that an officer does? Is there an opportunity to sort of identify these specific pilot projects so that we can start to put some ROI to it? And I think that's really what I'm asking for, where I'd like to see some concrete projects so that we can see a direct return on this investment.

Totally agree with you. If you look in the materials that we submitted over to council, I included some details about those pilot projects that we're working on that give you some of the outcomes that we're aiming for with those. And then to your point about LMPD, we are partnering with them on multiple fronts to try to deal with the administrative burden that officers face in filling out paperwork, but also looking at tools that can better equip their detectives so that when they're conducting an investigation, we can accelerate their time to getting closure to those cases. And there's a significant amount of time spent now looking at digital evidence when an event happens. I can think back to a shooting that happened at Waterfront Park here just in the last 60 days. I was talking to one of the guys from the homicide unit and he said, there were 13 cameras that we had to look at video footage from in order to determine whether or not we had either the victim or the suspect on that video. That was 13 hours that that detective spent not doing other work. Those are the value areas that I see us being able to get some wins with the technology. We've got a long way to go. We're not there yet, but I feel like we're on the right path, and I think we're chasing the right things that will provide that value that you're looking for.

Yeah, I completely agree. I think as we think about you know, I mean, cost reduction comes in two forms. One, you know, certainly cost reduction in reduction of people, but I don't think that's really what we're looking for. To me, it is cost reduction in, you know, sort of bending the curve on the expansion of people. And so if we can get, you know, 10, 20, 30% more productivity out of the people that we have, because they're augmented by these tools, that allows us to avoid growing costs by 10, 20 or 30%. And that to me is where the real returns from these investments are gonna come from.

Completely agree. I think the people behind you here from my department would tell you that I'm harping on that with them every day for the work that we do in MTS to try to get better at developing code and problem solving issues when they pop up instead of us trying to do that. So they're probably annoyed of hearing me talk about it, but that's where we're going as an organization.

Thank you, Vice Chair Winkler. And yeah, you said much more poetically what I was trying to get to earlier. But yes, I think that's the immediate gain or the most likely initial outcome is that we bend the curve on how many more people we need and get to do more services and more work. I mean, that was a perfect example, freaking 13 hours watching videos, which AI probably could have done in about three minutes is a perfect example. So Councilman Chappell.

I think just to kind of echo what Marcus was saying, Councilman Winkler was saying, because I wrote down this question and I think it complements his, but have you identified the savings year to date that AI has created for Louisville Metro and is there a potential savings that you've identified, you know, when you... Again, invest in a lot. You want to see the return on investment or ROI, as Councilman Winkler was saying. So maybe you could provide that when you get the rest of the material. I think saying AI makes people more efficient is... oddly a truth, but I think it's also a farce. We're seeing a lot of companies right now scaling back on the AI because they over-invested it, and I'm not talking about the anthropics of the world, I'm talking about companies who have really put all of their eggs into one AI basket, and they're learning, oh, we're overpaying for this, or it's not really creating the efficiencies that we had hoped. Companies that are laying off workforces right now saying, oh, well, it's because we've improved efficiencies with AI. That's more convenient to say than my company's not doing a very good job, and so I'll just blame it on this and use them as a scapegoat. So I think that the conversation around AI is something that we need to continually discuss, and especially as it's implemented into our government work. I think AI, artificial intelligence, that line is blurred in what is just a software update or an enhancement to a product versus, you know, what is making everything artificially intelligent, if you want to Say you use Google, you've kind of been using artificial intelligence for a very long time, especially if you have predictive text on. So I think, again, I'm going to echo the AI conversation is one that we really need to continue talking about because tools are only as good as the people that use them. And I think that that can kind of get disjointed, especially in Louisville Metro, because I don't think, you know, we can't even all get a similar email signature or a consistent font among our logos, department logos. So how could I expect anyone to be using AI efficiently, effectively, or collaboratively within Louisville Metro? Getting to questions.

if you asked me that it would have been a pot calling a kettle black with the crm that you are replacing is that crm a cella uh the crm uh in place today for a bulk of the departments is a cella but it's not exclusive to that we're looking to try to provide a tool that all metro agencies can use. And there are some cases where that won't fit. I can think of like the Louisville Zoo's gonna need their own product because they have a little bit of a different model. but where agencies maybe have different ingestion points for residents to contact them. Maybe they've got a form out on the website today that goes into JotForms or Smartsheet or some of those other products. I wanna just highlight that we're trying to bring that all together so that we have better insights into when a constituent reaches out, that we've got history on when they've had problems, what kind of problems they've had, so that we can better connect them to the services that they might be looking for. So yes, a cell is a piece of it. It's the big piece by far, but it's not the only piece.

In your 311 software, I know that that's under renovation right now, and there was just a survey that went out. Is there money in this budget to implement the changes from that survey?

We have requested that within the CRM budget, so the $3 million that's allocated or proposed to be allocated there is focused specifically on that work.

Sure, and can we get a breakdown of like that CRM, and maybe it is, I just haven't had a chance to like, what specifically, what specific products we're talking about when we say CRM?

Sure, and so let me clarify too, because we're not replacing the entirety of Acela, we're replacing the pieces of Acela that residents interface with on a daily basis. It will still be the system of record in the background, it'll still be the work order system that our departments work from because they have that muscle memory and the knowledge of how to use that. But our front facing side that our residents submit information to us through via dropping it in the 311 app or dropping it on our website is not very intuitive today and we're trying to correct that.

interested to see what you come up with. And then last question, because I always ask this. Earlier you were talking about when we're bringing our websites up to compliance and how every department has their own kind of contact to update their content. And we have never had a central content team as you identified earlier. It's something that I've been asking for for a very, very long time because our Metro website needs a lot of work. Is there money in this budget or anticipated in future budgets?

It's something that I think we'll work with the administration to try to find the right time to bring that forward. I think the team that is doing the CRM work is also responsible for the website. So I don't think we would have the capacity to take that project on this year. But I think once that project's in the tail, we could certainly look at that. And it's something that we think it's time. Our website platform that we're on, while we've kept it modernized in terms of the platform that it runs on, It was last significantly updated in 2014.

Thank you.

Do I need to jump back in the queue?

Okay. Okay, there's just no one else in the queue, so that's why I was asking if I could continue on. In here, there is money for a for the, in capital projects for data center enhancements and refresh. And so when people see that, they need to see that we're not building a new data center. We are updating the two that we have currently, correct?

That's correct.

And so we've given to date 3.75 million. This budget has 3 million. And it says here that next year you're probably going to ask $4 to $6 million to complete the work?

That's correct.

That is... quite a bit?

So our metro data center was built out when the metro safe facility was renovated in 2009 and so a lot of that equipment has been running continuously since 2009 and while I think my team has done an outstanding job of keeping a lot of that serviced on a quarterly basis and doing testing when we need to, it's past its service life for most of those components and so All of the critical workloads of the city operate in that facility. The 911 equipment that people rely on when they call, the facility is very much needing that to always work. And so we believe those investments are necessary in order to ensure that we don't have any downtime with either 911 or the rest of Metro's public safety systems that we provide.

Sure. And I'm done with my questioning because I can't bring myself to asking the one that your AI had predicted that I would ask because I don't really care to. But council members, please refer to their packet to see if your questions align with the one that they predicted you would ask. It's kind of a fun game.

So last year you all asked me to, I told you that I used AI to prepare for the budget hearing and you asked me to grade myself at the end of the year. So this year I thought rather than me grading myself, I would let you grade the AI yourself.

Let me ask a question, though. How did you use AI to generate the questions? Because here's the trick with AI, is it's what you put, it's most, like most systems, it's garbage in, garbage out, right? So it's what inputs do you put in, and then it's going to give you what inputs come out. Did you ask the system to look at prior budget hearings to then say, okay, that's Councilman Piagetini, now predict what he would ask given this presentation, given questions asked in the past?

Yes, so I took all of last year's budget hearing transcripts. I took all the ones this year up to the date that I submitted our packet, and I put those in there along with the proposed budget, and I asked it to ask questions that you would ask of the technology department based on what it had observed.

It's not wrong of what I maybe would have asked. is the 1% reduction question, which I've asked half the departments. So yes, that's pretty good. That's good. I'm sorry, were you finished?

Yes, sir.

OK. Just one quick follow up. Previously funded capital projects right now. We're running a balance of 7.6 million Do we think that will be completed? By the I mean really the end of this month is the end of the fiscal year or I mean how much more? How much longer is that gonna sit out there as an outstanding balance? And is any of that an opportunity to roll into some of these future projects like your infrastructure improvements?

So 3.75 of that was allocated last year for the data center, but we needed to see if the additional funds were gonna be appropriated to continue that work because that would change our approach if we weren't going to get a second allocation of funding. Makes sense.

So it's half, but how about the other?

The other half is projects that are on the tail end. I'd say that if they're not completed here in the next 30 days, they'd be completed by the end of this calendar year.

Okay, what I would ask is any balances left over before you start this infrastructure project, your data center project, I mean, even if it's a million dollars. I mean, our borrowing right now and the obligations we'll have on debt service isn't small. So any department assistance in saying, hey, we got this million left over, we can bond six instead of seven, it would be helpful. That's all I'll say.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much. And Councilman Herndon.

Full disclosure, I'm actually the AI version of Councilman Herndon. He isn't really here. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Well, it's funny you say that because you look really great today, so. Councilwoman Chappell again.

In the budget, you interesting outlined three, I struggle to call them peer cities, but three cities, Columbus, Nashville, and Lexington, and what they spend on their IT budgets. And of those four, us included, we, it looks like, are underfunding our IT. Is that the way that I'm understanding this?

So I think that there are nuances to anytime you try to benchmark against another city, right? So I would use caution in saying that we're underfunded. I would say that we run very lean from a staffing profile versus any of our peer cities. I think that was the bigger highlight for me to call out is that our staffing compared to our peers is very light. I think we're very efficient because of that. I think we've figured out how to navigate that world where others have just continued to grow their teams. So we are trying to balance out the demands of our agencies. We have 40 plus offices and agencies that we provide support to. We're basically providing two IT staff to every department if you were to kind of spread it out that way, which is not a lot in an organization with 6,000 employees. As we were heading into this year, and I know that there have been departments asked about what they would do with their 1%, I wanted to highlight that personnel would not be an area that I would ever suggest with our agency, and that was one of the reasons I included that in there was just for reference material.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. I have no other. Oh, yes, Councilman Parrish-Wright. She joined us a while ago. Apologize for not recognizing her when she joined. Thank you very much. No worries. And any other questions? I'm looking online. I have questions. Okay. Oh, you're now in my queue. Great. Councilman Michimika Parrish-Wright.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I first wanted to say I am traveling in the car, so I don't have those notes. I would be interested to see what my question is, probably centered around personnel, because that's what I'm going to ask about. What is the average salary? And I don't have my notes in front of me. How many are on your team and what is the highest and the lowest salary?

So we have 82 personnel, I believe, today as of the last report that I looked at. That doesn't include any contract staff that we have doing work on our behalf. Our lowest salary members are in our collective bargaining agreement. They just got a new contract in December of 2025. So their starting pay is now around 50, I want to say 57,000 to $58,000 a year for entry-level help desk for our team. And our highest salary is mine, which is 190,000.

Thank you. And the last question is around what is the, are you fully staffed or how many positions you have open?

We had one person accept a vacancy today, so I believe we have one vacancy currently in the department.

But out of the net, you're good on staffing concerns?

To the positions that we have been given, that is correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay, there's nobody else in the queue, but just to demonstrate how crazy good really artificial intelligence is, I will read some of these questions attributable to some of us. So Councilman Parrish-Wright, just so you're aware, your question was going to be, quote, how are you making sure these technology and AI investments do not increase inequity, vendor dependence, or barriers for residents who already struggle to access metro services? That's pretty good, right? How about this one? Yeah, how about this one? Vice Chair Winkler, what is Metro's AI strategy now, and what did we learn from fiscal year 26? What are the fiscal year 27 use cases, and how will council know whether AI is producing savings or better service? Did you read this before you asked it? No? I mean, that's spot on. I did not. Yeah. Mine asked about the 1% reduction. Let me see, who else should we highlight? Kevin, yeah. Chair Kramer was going to be, you know, I'll channel my inner Kramer. For each major MT, Metro Technology Services investment, what is the operating risk if we do not fund it, and what is the resident or agency impact if we do? I mean, these are pretty good. I mean, these are pretty accurate to where we would have gone.

May I say, though, most people are, she asks or he's likely to want...

Mine says, she regularly drills in.

So I feel like... It did pretty good. But maybe showed a little bias. Thank you.

Maybe drill's a little forceful, but no, very good.

I wanted to just demonstrate that the tool can be used by elected officials. It can be used by agency leaders. It can be used by frontline staff to help them prepare. And I think that that all makes us a better government.

Yeah, let me put it this way to my colleagues. If AI isn't your current speech writer, then you're missing the boat, okay? Because there have been a few times when I might have plugged in some ideas and said, put this in the voice of, and grabbed historical politicians, and great stuff comes out. So yeah, anyway, it does help. I use it regularly in my day job as well. I don't have any other people in the queue? Going once, twice? Well, thank you very much to Metro Technology Services. You were last, but certainly not least. With that, we are going to adjourn this budget hearing. And thank you to, again, everybody who had a role in getting us to this point. Oh, yes, no callbacks, correct? For the public and for, I mean, I'm sure Metro Hall wants to know, we have no scheduled callbacks, I will say at this time, just in case somebody changes their mind. Yes, and there is a special meeting on the 15th, which I believe is related to the hotel, yeah, the hotel convention tax district. Antarc. Antarc.

Antarc.

Yep, so, but that is a special meeting of the budget committee, not related to budget hearings per se, so great. That's correct. And with that, any other announcements, Vice Chair Winkler? No, Beth, no?

Okay, with that, we are adjourned. Thank you very much, everybody.